Respect your consumer’s time…all 3500 hours of it.

Back at it after a bit of a Labor Day end of Summer mental wind-down/respite. 

There’s a post on media consumption and shifting startegies that is getting a bit of conversation in the media world.

A couple of key points:

Overall communications spending is projected to grow 6.4% in 2007.  Good news for us in the branding biz.

Consumers are shifting their attention to alternative media.  Cconsumers are also migrating away from advertising-supported media, such as broadcast TV and newspapers, to consumer-supported platforms, such as cable TV and video-games.  No real revalations - but more bad news if you’re in the :30 spot biz.

And probably the saddest fact of all is that consumers are spending over 3500 hours annually engaged in some form of media messaging.

Now I’m not sure how VSS measures such statistics and I’m sure we could all say figures lie, and liars figure, but none the less at over 9 hours a day it is an inordinate amount of our daily lives.  Granted much of that media consumption is clutter not being paid attention to; much less retained or recalled.  But here’s the shout-out to smart marketers trying to build brands.  Respect the consumer’s time!

Think about it.  After consumers sleep 6-8 hours and then go off and spend the same amount of time earning a respectable wage to buy our stuff, we as marketers are basically taking all of what’s left.  Treat it as a business transaction with your consumer.  They will give us a small slice of that precious nine hour program block only for something worthwhile in return.

Make your branded message engaging and provide some real value for that time they just gave away.  Make it entertaining.  Make it remarkable.  Don’t just throw your message into the mix assuming it will connect with someone.  As Bonnie Raitt said, “Let’s give them something to talk about”.  Because when people talk, people buy.

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